Sir, we know, with regard to two or more of the Southern States, emphatic pledges have been given, through their Legislatures, that _some_ mode of resistance to this proviso will be adopted. Now, what is to be the result of the Nashville Convention which has been called for June next, should that body assemble and find matters in their present condition? If no bill shall have passed to do us justice by affording, as far as the law can afford it, the effectual restoration of fugitive slaves; if a bill shall have passed, or be likely to pass, with the insult of the Wilmot Proviso causelessly and wantonly inserted in it, after the announcement made in the extract of the speech which I have just read, and after that made by the Senator from New York that so far from there being an obligation to restore to us our fugitive slaves, the duty of hospitality requires that they shall be received, kept and retained from us and that the constitutional law which requires their restoration to us is contrary to the law of God, and not binding in conscience; and, still more, after the settled policy is fully realized that those who visit our shores, coming under the protection of the American flag within our jurisdiction, and, in violation of our laws, seduce our slaves from us, and carry them to the North, shall not be surrendered up as fugitives from justice, because the same high and overruling law which puts the Constitution down, and makes it a nullity, has converted what we call a crime into a high and meritorious act of duty, what will be the result of this convention, meeting under such circumstances, what may be, what probably will be, the consequence? I say it not because I wish it, I do not wish it; the conviction has been forced upon my mind by evidence reluctantly received; and therefore I wish my friends around me to give, for that reason, the more credit to what I say--if that convention shall meet under such circumstances, in my judgment the Union is from that day dissolved. I do not say that dissolution will follow instantly; I do not say but that a connection, an external Union, may not be maintained, and linger on for a few years longer: but the meeting of that convention will be to our institutions, in the language of Napoleon, "the beginning of the end"; it will be the initiative step in such a course of measures, North and South, as will result in convulsing us so far that the ills to which we fly, cannot, in our judgment, exceed those we bear; and thus will be put upon the people of the South the necessity, the painful, hard necessity, of a dissolution, a final separation. Now, sir, why do I take this view? In the first place, the meeting of the Nashville Convention is, upon its face, a step towards a separate and distinct organization of the Southern States. The very movement separates them for a time, in purposes and intent, from the great mass of the population of the country. They meet there for what